Wisconsin’s rates have long been among the lowest in the country. The result is that mental health services are curtailed because of lack of availability of those who can afford to provide the services. See “Voices from the Front Lines: NAMI’s Lindsay Wallace” for a discussion of how the low rates affect people with mental illness in Dane County.

Gov. Walker has just announced that rates will be raised next year. According to him, they will be competitive with those in neighboring states. Click here to read the press release. Here are excerpts.

“This morning, at the 13th Annual Mental Health and Substance Use Recovery Training Conference in Wisconsin Dells, Department of Health Services Secretary Linda Seemeyer announced an investment of about $17 million, including $7 million in state funding, to raise rates for professionals providing outpatient mental health and substance use disorder services.”

“Effective January 1, 2018, Wisconsin Medicaid will increase reimbursement for outpatient mental health and substance use disorder treatment. This policy change will increase the maximum allowable fee for each covered outpatient service, and simplify the current rate structure, moving from five different fees per service to two fees per service. The new rates are competitive with border-state Medicaid programs and Medicare reimbursement, supporting growth of the Wisconsin provider workforce.”

Click here to read a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that describes reactions by advocates to the increase.

UPDATE: Wisconsin Health News provided this report about the state’s AG’s reaction to the opioid crisis.

“Attorney General Brad Schimel called for increased attention to prevention and higher reimbursement rates for addiction treatment at a Medical College of Wisconsin forum on the opioid epidemic.

‘We’re making great progress but I kind of liken this to a sinking rowboat,’ he said. ‘Law enforcement is bailing it out by arresting drug dealers. Treatment providers are bailing it out by helping people get treatment. But there’s a big hole in the bottom of the boat. And I think this is the most important piece of our efforts, it has to be the prevention side. We’ve got to get this message out to the public and to the medical community.’

Schimel also said that ‘we’re going to commit to dramatically raising the rates at which we reimburse people to provide mental health services’ and addiction treatment services to attract more workers to the field.

He and other attorneys general are putting pressure on insurers to make those changes, he said.”

“In comments submitted to DHS in mid-November, the association praised the increase. But they urged the department to add codes for psychiatrists, advanced practice psychiatric nurses and psychiatric physician assistants.

WHA general counsel Matthew Stanford wrote that the lack of codes for those professions is a “significant omission if the goal is to provide a comprehensive outpatient behavioral health reimbursement increase to address access difficulties – particularly Wisconsin’s acute shortage of psychiatrists.”